


drag me head first (fearless)

by maurascalla



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Character Death, Drowning, F/F, F/M, Русалка | нимфа | nimfa | Rusalka (Slavic Mythology & Folklore)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 08:06:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2221698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maurascalla/pseuds/maurascalla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mandy died when she was eight years old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drag me head first (fearless)

**Author's Note:**

> Wikipedia describes rusalkas as "[a Slavic spirit, the equivalent to a mermaid] who lived at the bottom of rivers. In the middle of the night, they would walk out to the bank and dance in meadows. If they saw handsome men, they would fascinate them with songs and dancing, mesmerize them, then lead them away to the river floor to their death." She is typically a woman who died before her time, tragically, and in some legends she will age as if she were still alive. In many stories, a rusalka haunts the body of water in which she died, and she will die a true death if she allows her hair to dry out completely. 
> 
> Everything you don't see in the above description, I made up or twisted for my own purposes.

Mandy died when she was eight years old. 

It was a sunny day and Mickey, who was ten and always telling Mandy how much smarter he was than her, cut school and took her to the lake with him. They spent most of the day on the L, jumping turnstiles and avoiding security guards, and when they finally got to the lake at dusk, there wasn’t anyone else around. It was an unusually cold September, and Mickey told her that was the best time to visit the beach and she believed him. 

She was wearing a Scooby Doo bikini and a pair of inflatable arm floaties she’d taken from the public pool the year before when she swam out so far from the lake’s shore she couldn’t touch the gravel making up the lake bed. She called out to Mickey, scared and screaming. He laughed, calling her a baby, but swam out to meet her. He never got there. She was swept out further and further, and the further she went, the more she panicked. 

Mandy died, choking on lake water and calling Mickey’s name. 

**

She remembers dying. She remembers the way the water felt as it closed around her, covering her, filling her, coming in through her nose and her mouth. Her ears, even. She remembers screaming and thrashing and choking and she remembers not being able to scream anymore, body limp. It’s been years, and she can’t remember Mickey’s face, exactly, but she can remember how it felt to know that he couldn’t save her. Mandy thought he was capable of anything. He was a god and he failed her. 

Mandy’s body had been dragged from the lake by the National Guard hours after she drowned, because Mickey thought he could still save her if he could just find her. He cried and hollered and shouted after her, but she was already gone. She watched from the shores edge, water lapping over her bare feet, as they pulled her body from the water, wet and heavy. She was naked, she’s always naked now. She’s been on this Earth more years naked than clothed-- more years dead than alive. 

She watched her family; her parents, their siblings, her brothers, down at the other end of the shore, huddled together. She’d never seen her father cry before. She’d never seen any of them cry before. Mandy can’t remember some of their faces, but she can remember the sound of her mother wailing into her father’s chest, his arms tight around her shaking shoulders. It’s been so long that she can’t remember some of their names, the brothers and uncles and cousins who were old when she was young. She would be twenty-one if she were still alive. 

That night, on the beach, she screamed and screamed, waited for them to notice her. No one did. It was years before someone saw her again. Years and years, and she was fifteen the first time a man walked up to her, sunning herself on the beach. He looked down at her naked body and smirked like he had a secret that he didn’t want to share. Mandy stared up at him, shielding her eyes from them sun. He was pretty, but his mouth looked mean, they way she remembered her father’s to be when she had one. 

“What are you doing out here, girl?” he asked, and Mandy sat up, her hair, heavy and wet, falling over her shoulder like a waterfall. She blinked at him owlishly, because she forgot how to form words in the time since she died. 

“Why can you see me?” She asked, and the voice that came out was different than the one she remembered. She looked around her; the beach was empty, except for the man, and her skin itched. She wanted to be back in the water, where she spent most of her days and nights. Under the waves that killed her. She felt better in the water than she felt on the beach, fuller and realer. The man was still smiling. 

“It’s rude to answer a question with a question,” he said, hands on his hips. He was teasing, Mandy thought. She pursed her lips and paused before standing, her feet digging into the sand and the rocks. It was warm, like the sun on her shoulders, and it made her feel warm inside. 

She ignored the man and walked to the shore, where the tide washed away the sand crusting her ankles. “Why can you see me?” she asked again. “I’m dead.”

“You seem pretty alive to me.” His eyes lingered on parts of Mandy’s body she hadn’t really considered before. It made her feel hot and warm in a different way than the sun did. She turned away, walking further into the surf. He followed her, taking off his shoes and clothes when it became apparent that she wasn’t coming back out of the lake. 

When Mandy was up to her shoulders, she kicked her feet out from under herself and floated in place, her arms skimming forwards and backwards. The man laughed, and when Mandy looked back at him, she saw his black shorts billowing out around his legs, buoyant from the swell. 

“Are we going to do this, or what?” the man demanded, the tone in his voice contrasting with the cheerful smile on his face. His eyes were colder than they were before, and Mandy shivered in a way she was unfamiliar with. 

She thought she knew what he might want, so she swam in close, their bodies colliding. His hands were on her, and she giggled, licking her teeth. Mandy wrapped her body around his, bringing her hands up to his shoulders, and constricted around him, pulling him in closer and closer until he grunted in pain. 

“You wanna back off a little, sugar tits?” He gasped, but Mandy didn’t listen. She knew what she had to do. She could feel how right it was, felt it swimming through her like she swam through the lake. It was right and it was good and her gut told her to, so she gripped that man from the beach so tight, and she dragged him down to the bottom of the lake. She felt his life leave his body, like hers had done, and she laughed, the air from her lungs bubbling out of her. Her laughter floating up and up and up to the surface of the lake. 

When he was certainly dead, she let him go, and he floated up too. 

It wasn’t until after that she realized she could have asked the man if he knew Mickey. Maybe he did, and Mandy missed out. She doesn’t let that happen again, doesn’t make the same mistake twice. Every man she pulls down into the lake, every body she yanks down into its depths, she asks them first if they know Mickey, if they know her father, who was so big and so tall when she was young. She doesn’t know why she asks. She doesn’t really want to know them, can’t know them. 

Because if she sees them again, she’ll kill them, probably. 

**

Shortly after her first kill, Mandy begins to spend all day in the lake, swimming as far down as it goes. When she’s in the water, it’s like she doesn’t have any bones at all, her body just goes and flows with the current and the feeling is indescribable. 

She doesn’t understand why she’s such a wisp in the roll of the waves and a sack of bones on dry land. The longer she stays up there, the dryer her hair gets, the heavier she feels. It’s like the water gives her life, and she doesn’t get it, but she doesn’t know what else to do. She’s dead, and she needs the water to breathe. It doesn’t make sense, and she wishes it would. None of the men she sinks come back like her, or if they do, she doesn’t see them. 

Mandy doesn’t hit the beach until nightfall, most days, the sky dark and the moon shining over her pale skin. Sometimes she hides in the rocks and waits for someone to walk by. Sometimes she just lays in the sand and lets it coat her skin in a fine layer of armor. 

Sometimes she sees girls instead of men wandering past her beach and she hides. She thinks about maybe dragging them to the bottom of the lake, just to see what would happen. Would they strike out violently like a man? Would they die angry, cursing her? Would they come back like she did, whole and not human at all? She wonders, but doesn’t do anything about it. 

Mandy is so curious about girls, about women, who come to the beach in varying states of dress and undress, and she wants to know them. The only woman she knew when she was alive was her mother, and she wonders if all women are like her, quiet and unresponsive. She assumes all men were like her father, her brothers; mean, hurtful. Even Mickey, who’d been her favorite, failed her in ways she never could have imagined. He let her die, and men were, as a whole, disappointing, she’s discovered since she began drowning them. But these women, these girls? Mandy doesn’t know anything about them and that makes them different, scary. 

She’s not a coward, she doesn’t think, but she still makes herself comfortable in a pile of rocks whenever a gaggle of girls makes their way to her stretch of beach, hiding from sight. 

**

Winter is coming, Mandy’s favorite time of year. She doesn’t feel the cold the way she did when she was living. She hardly feels it at all, and she loves how ice feels under her fingers, smooth like a stone but rough like sand and slippery. She likes it when the lake is covered in floating chunks of it. She sits on them at night and glides across the surface while she looks up at the sky and thinks about the snow fort she’ll inevitably build for herself when enough of the fluffy stuff falls and it’s sticky enough to mold into a fun hide out. 

Winter is coming, but not just yet. The leaves have started to change and the sky gets darker earlier and earlier with every passing day. 

“It’s the perfect time to go the beach,” says a boy. At first, Mandy thinks it’s Mickey, thinks he came back for her. It’s not, it’s a tall boy, with sandy hair. He’s lanky and skinny and he’s wearing a sweatshirt with his blue swim trunks. 

Mandy licks her lips, excited, because it’s been a while since there was a stray boy to trick into the waves. Behind him though, are two girls, and Mandy sinks deeper into her hiding spot behind the rocks. 

“You keep saying that,” says a girl, bigger than the boy, wearing a two piece swimsuit Mandy has never seen on such a round figure. It’s red and the girl looks like an apple someone’s taken a bite out of. 

“It’s okay, Angie, we don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.” The second girl is tall and slight, and her hair is bright like fire but rolls down her back like water. Mandy wants to touch it, because it confounds her. Her fingers curl, nails digging into the rock, scraping against it. 

“Oh, I’m going in,” says Angie, “I’ll be damned if I’m not going to have fun on my day off!”

The boy laughs and pulls off his sweater, tossing it to the ground. “Last one in’s a rotten egg!” he shouts, sudden and startling. He runs down the beach and flings his body into the surf. The girls stand, rooted to their spots, and giggle at his antics. 

“Hey, Debbie, come on! Get in!” the boy calls, gesturing wildly while bobbing up and down like a buoy. “Angie, come on!”

“That boy is lucky he’s cute,” Angie says, rolling her eyes at Debbie who smiles in return, her lips stretched thin over her pale face. “I’m going in, you coming?”

Debbie sets the bag she had slung over her delicate shoulder down and settles next to it in the sand. “I’m good. I’m kind of swimmed out, honestly. After working at the pool all summer, I might never swim again!” Angie laughs, and leaves the smaller girl for the waves. 

Mandy watches the people in the water splash each other playfully, ducking away from attacks and rewarding themselves with kisses and insults. She sees men like this, sometimes. Happy and carefree and it makes her heart ache because she still wants to drown them, but she knows someone would miss them. That hurts her, makes her feel sad in a way nothing else does. She can’t heal herself. She can’t. She can’t help it anymore than she can help being dead, and tries not to hate herself for it. Sometimes it works. 

She’s so deep in thought, so busy watch the couple in lake acting like it’s not too cold for swimming, that she doesn’t feel Debbie until the girl is staring down at her, standing on top of her hiding place, toes curling against the boulders. Her toe nails are bright pink and they match her bathing suit. 

“Why are you naked?” she asks, and Mandy can’t see anything that isn’t how brightly her hair shines in the dull autumn sun. 

“I’m dead,” she replies, because she is. 

“What’s your name?” Debbie says, her nose scrunched up cutely. Mandy thinks that maybe she doesn’t believe her. 

“Mandy,” she says, her eyes cutting over to check on the girl’s friends. They’re still dunking each other in the drink. She’s still safe, maybe. “Milkovich,” she adds as an after thought. 

Debbie’s eyes narrow, her hands coming up to rest on her waist. “My brother’s boyfriend had a sister named Mandy,” she says and Mandy’s throat constricts. 

“Mickey?” Mandy chokes out. She feels like she’s drowning, like she’s little again, wearing stolen floaties and dying. 

“What the fuck?” Debbie crouches down on the rock before kicking her feet out from under her. She lands with an ungraceful plop, legs dangling down and swinging. She’s freckled, everywhere, and Mandy lets herself think of them as stars. It calms her down to count them. “Who are you?”

“I’m Mandy,” Mandy says again. “And I’m dead. I’ve been dead for a while, I think.” 

“This isn’t possible!” Debbie says, “Am I high?” 

Mandy shrugs. “How the fuck should I know? You just got here.”

It’s quiet after that, and Mandy checks in on Angie and her boy again. They’ve moved further down the beach, half in and half out of the water. If she makes a run for it, she could be at the lake bed before they realize she’s there. 

“You sound just like him,” Debbie says after a minute, again interrupting Mandy from her thoughts.

“Who?” she asks, even though she knows who. 

“This is too weird! I should take you with me-- call the police, maybe?” Debbie doesn’t look at her. Instead, she looks at a phone she’s pulled out of seemingly nowhere. Mandy has a collection of them where she sleeps at the bottom of the lake. She takes them from the pockets of the men she kills. She likes to look at them, even though the water renders them useless. She uses them to decorate, likes their pretty cases. 

“Fuck the police,” Mandy says without thinking. Debbie’s eyes grow round with surprise. She curses under her breath. “You can’t tell anyone I’m here,” Mandy continues, “I hurt people.”

“How?”

“I drown them. It’s just something I do.” 

“Oh,” Debbie scratches her chin. “Are you going to drown me?”

Mandy shrugs, her shoulders going up and down quickly. “I’ve never drowned a girl before.”

“Good,” Debbie says. “Because I have a shiv and I know how to use it!”

They’re quiet again, and Mandy stares at Debbie’s hair. It’s wavy and long like the plants that grow under the lake. It hangs heavily from her head and Mandy wants to touch it. She doesn’t, and bites her lip instead. 

“Do you want to see a picture of him?” Debbie asks, tilting her phone back and forth in Mandy’s face. She presses on the screen a few times before saying, “Of Mickey?”

After a pause, Mandy nods, holding her hand out. Her fingers are covered in sand, and Debbie frowns but hands it over anyway. 

Mandy lifts the phone up to her face and sees a photo of two boys, one of them tall with red hair like Debbie’s, and the other with looks like hers, pale with blue eyes like the sky the morning after it rains all night. He’s smaller than she thought he’d be, and he’s smiling, which she didn’t expect either. Mickey’d always been such an angry boy. 

“He’s happy?” she asks before she can help herself. She touches the screen where her grown up brother’s face stares out at her. Debbie nods, and holds her hand out for her phone. Mandy gives it back, sad to see it go. She is upset that Mickey’s happy when she’s dead, but she’s glad too. “What about my other brothers? My mom? Dad?”

Debbie shakes her head. “I don’t know about your brothers. Iggy’s the only one who stuck around after Mickey started dating Ian. You’re dad’s in prison,” she pauses and says, “I’m sorry, but your mom’s dead.”

Mandy nods, absentminded. She’s lost in memories of her mother, who she hasn’t thought of in years. She’d been a slip of a woman, with long stringy black hair and dull eyes. She was young when Mandy was little, only thirty, but years of living with Mandy’s dad and having his army of boy children took its toll. She’d looked so haggard, like a weathered rock or the beach after a storm. Mandy doesn’t know if she’s sad because she can’t remember having feelings about her mother at all. She tucks her hair behind her ears and stares out at the lake. 

“I’m sorry,” Debbie says again, reaching a hand out to touch Mandy’s shoulder. It feels warm and nice on her skin. “You’re really cold, Mandy.” She doesn’t pull away though. 

“I’m dead,” Mandy reminds her. Debbie nods, and still doesn’t pull away. They’re quiet again, and Mandy doesn’t know what to say. She has so many questions, but wouldn’t know what to do with the answers. She looks at Debbie, who is watching out for her friends deep in the surf, and thinks again about touching her, maybe where her hand is on Mandy’s shoulder. She bites her lip and stops thinking about it and just does it. She traps Debbie’s hand under her own and feels the girl’s warmth seeping out of her living flesh. 

“I have to go,” Debbie mumbles, slipping away from Mandy, curling in on herself. “I don’t want Angie and Matty to worry about me.”

Mandy nods, understanding that her friends aren’t the reason at all. It’s her. Mandy startled her or made her uncomfortable in some way, and now she wants to leave. She bites back the urge to beg Debbie to stay. She likes Debbie; likes how warm she is and how her eyes look in the sun. Likes that she doesn’t want to lure her to her death. 

“Make sure your friend isn’t alone in the water, okay?” Mandy says instead of everything she’s thinking. She locks eyes with Debbie pointedly, and doesn’t let her go until she gives a nod of understanding. Mandy does not want to kill this Matty person, because Debbie cares for him, and she doesn’t want to upset her, but she just might. 

Debbie leaves and Mandy can hear her hollering to her friends. The air seems stiller now, like it’s been frozen in time, and for a second, Mandy can’t breathe. 

It passes. 

When Debbie and her friends leave, Mandy watches them go, peaking out from behind her rocks. The girl who looked like a freshly bitten apple is now wrapped up in the boy’s oversized sweatshirt, and she had his arm around her shoulders, curling into her warmth. They are laughing, still riding the high of a day on the beach with people they care for. Debbie is more reserved; walking sedately, her shoes dangling from her fingertips, bag slung over her shoulder. A breeze rolls through and Mandy watches as she shivers. 

It is likely that she will never see her again. That thought, more than anything else today had to offer, makes her sad. 

**

That night, when the moon is high, Mandy swims through the tangles of lake plants and algaes, twisting her body and soaring through the currents. She doesn’t want to think too hard about the day’s events, doesn’t want to think too hard about Debbie. 

Debbie with her skin like stars and her hair like flames. Her voice had been low and rumbly for a girl’s, and Mandy liked it. Liked the sound of it when she spoke. Mandy didn’t want to think about that at all, so she swims instead. She swims with her fingers darting out like sharp swords, cutting her way through the lake. The water is cold, and getting colder every day. She can hardly feel it, but the fish know, and her favorite haunts are never quite the same in the winter with the fish hiding away, waiting for the warm to come back. 

Mandy doesn’t think about the fish or the girl or her brother, whose smile lit up Debbie’s phone the way the moon’s lighting up the lake. She doesn’t think about those things at all, except that they’re swirling around in her head and they won’t let her go. She can’t find peace. 

There’s water in her nose and her mouth, down her throat and in her ears when she realizes: she talked to a girl. For the first time since she died. It wasn’t half as scary as she thought it’d be. She laughs, shooting through the water, going faster and faster, laughing harder and harder, until she gets the other side of this vast lake.

Then she does it again. 

**

Mandy does not expect Debbie to come back. She doesn’t expect to ever see her again because she told the girl she kills people, that she can’t help herself. If Debbie’s smart, Mandy’ll never see her again. Except, she does. 

“Hey, Mandy!” Debbie calls out, poking her head over the rim of Mandy’s rocky hide-y hole. Mandy, who had been soaking up the rays and playing with a lighter someone left in the sand, bolts up right, startled. 

“What do you want?” she asks, abrupt without meaning to be. Debbie’s smiling at her, crawling over the rocks and into the hole between them to sit next to Mandy. Their bodies are pressed together, and the sand on Mandy’s skin is rubbing off onto Debbie’s pink tanktop and black shorts. She’s carrying a tote bag, the same one she had with her the other day, only instead of towels, it now carries books and a dented tin water bottle. 

“I have a surprise!” Debbie says, digging through her bag. She pulls out an old book with silver edged pages that shimmer prettily in the sun when she poses with it dramatically. 

“What is it?” Mandy asks. She draws her knees to her chest, making more room for Debbie, who quickly moves into the empty space, pushing in like water.

“After I met you, I went to the library and checked out some books about ghosts. Anyway, I got a bunch of books, but none of the descriptions in them sounded right.” Debbie flips open the book in her hands before turning it so Mandy could see a picture of a pale woman in a white dress.

“Like this? A Woman in White? She’s a ghost usually ‘born of tragedy,’ like how you drowned, but she usually killed her own kids first, and you were too young when you died to have even been pregnant, so she’s out.

“But then I thought, you died but you’re still aging? So I tried looking that up, and the results were very interesting! Did you know that there were kinds of vampires that-” Debbie pauses, closing the book with the silver pages. She reaches into her bag for another book, this one even older than the last. The cover is held together with clear, peeling tape, and Mandy thinks maybe Debbie isn’t handling it with enough care. “- don’t become vampires until after they kill themselves! It ages too, like you. It’s still living, technically, but blood is it’s main source of nutrition! It’s called an upir, and you aren’t one, but it was definitely fascinating.”

Debbie stops to breathe. She’s such a fast talker, and Mandy can hardly keep up. Mandy asks, “What’re you talking about?”

“Don’t you wanna know what you are?” She replies, her eyes so wide and earnest it makes Mandy’s chest ache.

“It’s rude to answer a question with a question,” she snaps before she can think better of it. Debbie’s smile falters, her lips twitching. She looks away, down at the books in her lap, and touches the covers distractedly. Mandy curses under her breath.

“It’s important to know who you are, Mandy,” Debbie says, still not looking up. Her fingers are long and freckled, and her fingernails are bright and blue like the sky above them. Mandy watches them stroke the books delicately and says nothing. “Do you want to drown people forever? What kind of life is that?”

“I’m dead,” Mandy reminds her, “Not much of a life.” She feels warm when Debbie looks over at her again, staring at her like she’s taking mental notes. Feeling compelled Mandy adds, mumbling because it’s private and personal, even if she doesn’t know why, “I feel like I can’t leave the lake.”

“Oh, I know!” Debbie pulls out yet another book and turns the pages quickly until she finds the one she’s looking for, and hands the whole book to Mandy. “I only mentioned the upir thing because it’s a slavic twist on vampires. You and Mickey, you’re Ukrainian, so I thought I was at least looking in the right direction. 

“You’re a rusalka, Mandy.” Debbie points to a drawing of a woman with long, dark hair standing in the middle of a field of flowers. The meadow fades out and text takes over the page about halfway down, and Mandy traces over the words she never got around to learning. 

“What does that mean?” Mandy breathes, her eyes stuck to the pages. She shifts though the book with shaking hands, taking in pictures of terrifying women, naked with round eyes and pointed teeth. 

“You’re haunting this lake because you died here when you were young. Was it- was it violent?” Debbie asks, and she sounds choked up about it. Mandy looks at her, watches her swallow thickly, but her shoulders are squared, chin tilted up. She nods.

“Yeah,” she admits and she’s surprised when her voice is hoarse. 

Debbie clears her throat and continues, “Well, you can’t let your hair dry out; it say that in the book. That’s why you can’t leave. This is where you have to live out the rest of your life.”

“Does it say why I drown people?” Mandy wants to know if there’s something innate in her that makes her this way, or if it came to her as part of whatever this curse is. It doesn’t matter either way, it’s who she is now, regardless. It’s the only thing she is. 

Debbie shakes her head, her high ponytail swaying behind her, and says, “It’s just something that rusalkas do.” 

Mandy looks up into the sky, at the clouds blowing over the sun. It’s windy, and Mandy wonders if Debbie is cold. “Oh,” she says, fingers curling around the edges of the book still in her hands. “Oh.”

“Do you-” Debbie touches Mandy’s arm, getting her attention. “Do you want to drown people?”

It’s a loaded question: does she want to kill people? Part of her doesn’t. She wants to walk down the street in clothes and talk to friends she’s had for years and years. She wants to see a person and see what they’re worth beyond how long she would have to hold them under water before they finally give up and die. She looks at Debbie, sees the wrinkle between her eyes and doesn’t want to drown her. 

But it’s not like Mandy thinks she can stop, or even really wants to. The men who come up to her in the dark and touch her skin, she has to kill them. Something inside of her pulls and pulls until she has his head under the waves. 

“Sometimes,” she settles on, avoiding Debbie’s eyes. 

“I tried to drown a girl once, at the pool,” says Debbie, and her tone is light like air. Mandy looks up, startled and surprised. “She was mean to me! And homophobic!” Debbie cries out, like she’s trying to defend herself, even though Mandy doesn’t really understand the other girl’s crime, doesn’t know what it means to be homophobic. “And anyway, it felt really good. Like, like better than anything else. I felt like I could do anything.”

“How’d you do it?” Mandy asks. She closes the book in her lap and leans forward excitedly, hair falling over her shoulders. 

Debbie smiles, a dark blush spreading under her freckles. “Sand bags wrapped around her neck,” she says lowly, like it’s a secret. “I waited until she was showing off-- doing a handstand under water-- before I jumped in and just,” Debbie gestures elaborately with her hands before continuing, “Left her there to die.” 

“Did she?” Mandy wants to know. 

“No, but I was banned from the pool for the rest of the summer.” Debbie frowns, her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth downturned. “Which sucked because I trained all summer to visit the city pool.” 

“You didn’t know how to swim?” 

Debbie shakes her head, “I did, I just couldn’t hold my breath long enough. My dad said I couldn’t go to the pool until I could stay under for a minute, at least.” 

Mandy thinks that’s a strange requirement, but doesn’t comment. Instead she asks, chin resting in her hand, staring up at Debbie with inquiring eyes, “Can you still hold it for that long? Your breath?”

“Longer, now. I’m a lifeguard,” Debbie replies with a shrug. Mandy remembers lifeguards from when she was young, remembers them sitting up high on elevated wooden chairs with sunglasses on their faces and red foam resting across their laps. She pictures Debbie like that, suntan lotion on the bridge of her nose, cool, bored expression her face. Looking at her now, open and earnest, it seems almost impossible that she could be one of those impossibly stoic poolside guardians. 

“Hey, Mandy,” Debbie says, pulling Mandy from her thoughts. “Your hair looks dry.”

Alarmed, Mandy’s hand shoots up, patting at her head. The top was bone dry, and warmed by the sun, like a rock left uncovered during the day. She hadn’t noticed, too wrapped up in books that smell like dust and all this new information swirling around her head to feel the pull in her gut calling her back to the lake. 

“What happens to me?” she asks, “If it does dry?” 

Debbie shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says. She’s staring at Mandy intensely, like she’s waiting for her to move suddenly. “You should probably get back in.” 

The lake is blue, a reflection of the day’s beautiful weather, when Mandy glances at it over Debbie’s freckled shoulder. She licks her lips and feels the waves rolling over her body already, and a part of her aches. She wants to swim, because her body is telling her to and she’s never once fought against it, but it’s different today. Debbie is today. Unexpected but true, and Mandy doesn’t want her to go, and she’s afraid she might. 

“Are you gonna leave?” Mandy asks, and doesn’t look at Debbie. She’s still looking at the lake, wind blowing her hair around her head, making it hard to see and easy to hide. The book’s still in her hands. She feels drained, like she hasn’t in a while, and she wants in the lake but she wants near this girl too. 

Debbie brought her books and wants her to be better and wants her to know everything, and not for any personal gain. She shines like the sun, so bright Mandy feels like shielding her eyes. She never wants her to leave. 

It occurs to her that if she drowns Debbie, she might die like Mandy, stuck inside the lake’s shores. She wouldn’t be able to leave, ever, and the idea does have a certain appeal to Mandy, who wants to see what Debbie’s hair looks like undone and floating underwater. 

“Not if you don’t want me to,” Debbie says, collecting her books, fingers brushing against Mandy’s thigh when she plucks the one about rusalkas from her lap. She puts them back into her bag gingerly and stands, brushing the sand from the seat of her shorts, from her knees. “But I’m going to stay on the shore,” she states, voice solid and sure. She catches Mandy’s eye and holds it until Mandy feels like she should nod, understanding the implications. 

Debbie doesn’t trust her, and Mandy doesn’t blame her. 

They step out from behind protective cover of the rocks and walk together down the beach until water laps over Mandy’s bare feet. She feels better instantly. She hadn’t even realized how fuzzy she’d begun to feel, attributing the buzzing in her brain to the news Debbie brought her. It was that, but it was also being away from her lake for just a little too long. She curls her toes into the wet and and sighs. 

“Are you going to get in?” Debbie asks, sitting down just behind Mandy, where the sand isn’t wet. When Mandy turns to look at her, her shining hair is flying around her face. She’d taken it out of her ponytail, and it’s like a bright red bramble bush. Mandy laughs, pulling her own hair from her eyes. The wind is blowing harshly, having picked up even more since the morning. They hadn’t noticed as much, hidden away like they were in the rocks. Mandy laughs again, turning back to the lake, eyes scanning over it’s rippling surface. 

She strides in, confident and sure, her toes sliding into the sand until they no longer touch the bottom. At that point, Mandy dives in fully, her whole body submerged. She darts through the lake like a tiny fish streaking for cover, the water rushing amazingly against her skin. She twists her body and turns back for the shore after only a few moments. She pops her head out between waves and scans the beach for Debbie, thinking maybe she left while Mandy was reacquainting herself with the lake. Against all logic, the girl is still sitting by the lake, knees draw up to her chest, watching Mandy watch her from the surf. 

They smile at each other, and Mandy sees Debbie duck her head and let her hair fall back into her face. It leaves the pit of her stomach aching and warm and Mandy speeds back to the beach as fast as she can. 

“You didn’t leave,” she says, but regrets it. She sounds stupid. 

“I said I wouldn’t,” Debbie replies. She’s biting her lips together, and won’t look at Mandy. The corners of her mouth are tilted up though, like she’s smiling, and Mandy is unsure of where to go from here. She swims in closer, until her body is pressed against the shifting sands, neither in or out of the water. She lays there, pebbles pressing into her chest and pelvis, legs floating and free, waiting for something. She isn’t sure what, but she knows; something. 

There’s a silence, and it isn’t awkward, just long. It ends when Debbie, peeking out through her hair, slides her leg out, toes pointed, until they’re resting just in the water, near Mandy’s head. They smile at each other again, and just like that, the flood gates crash open, and they’re talking about the sky and Debbie’s day and how Mickey’s doing and the way her cakes are coming out too dry and she can’t figure out what she’s doing wrong. 

It’s dark by the time Debbie packs up her stuff, getting ready to leave. 

“Be safe?” Mandy says, touching Debbie’s shoulder. They’re standing side-by-side, further up the beach than Mandy’s used to wandering, and Debbie’s towering over her, standing as tall as some men. 

“I carry mace and a shiv, no one’s going to roll me!” Debbie jokes, but Mandy knows she’s got pepper spray in her pocket and couple of handmade weapons from her brother. Mickey taught her how to fight too, Mandy remembers Debbie saying before, as a favor to another brother of Debbie’s, the one with her hair. She shouldn’t worry, but she does. “I’ll be fine, Mandy! Really!” Debbie says, and her low voice is patient and reassuring. “I’ll come back soon, okay?”

They don’t hug goodbye, because Mandy doesn’t know how, but they do wish each other a good night, and part ways smiling. Mandy feels light like air and wonders if she’ll blow away in the wind that never died back down. 

That night, at the bottom of the lake, she runs her fingers through the underwater plants and she thinks of Debbie’s hair and when the sun comes up the next morning, she thinks of Debbie’s smile and when she drowns a drunken straggler staggering down the beach three days later, she thinks of how disappointed Debbie would be if she knew. 

**

After that, Debbie shows up all the time. She’s there after school every other day, wearing thicker and warmer clothes until she’s so bundled up that the only part of her Mandy can see through the knits and fleece is her pink face. She comes, even when she has to stomp through the wind and the ice and eventually, there’s a trail from the road to Mandy’s beach where Debbie’s boots have permanently crushed down the snow. 

They build a snow fort, where it’s warm enough for Debbie to shed her coat and to avoid being seen during the day. They sit in the fort and talk about Debbie’s hopes and dreams and the things Mandy remembers from being alive. Sometimes Debbie will describe movies to Mandy, or bring her laptop and set it up carefully on her backpack, resting on her coat to keep dry, so Mandy can watch them herself. One time, Debbie brings her one of brother’s cigarettes for them to try, and finds that she doesn’t like them, but Mandy does. 

Mandy likes most of the things Debbie brings to her, but mostly because Debbie was the one who brought them. She doesn’t hide at the bottom of the lake during the daytime anymore, and hasn’t for months. She’s on human time, hiding at night and aware during the day. It’s weird at first, but she’s afraid she’ll miss Debbie otherwise, and she doesn’t want that.

It’s a Friday, Mandy knows because Debbie told her earlier (“Happy Friday, Mandy!”), and they’re sitting in their snowy cave while the wind blows outside, whistling angrily against the entrance. Mandy’s smoking more of Debbie’s stolen cigarettes, exhaling in the general direction of their ventilation, a series of small secondary holes in the roof to let out excess heat and smoke. Debbie’s doing homework, reading a flimsy book and making notes in a well worn spiral notebook, her eyebrows drawn together in concentration, and Mandy doesn’t want to bother her. The redhead wants to go to college, and she says the only way girls like her get in is hard work and a lot determination, and Mandy doesn’t ever want to be the reason she doesn’t get everything she wants in life. 

“Hey, Mandy?” Debbie asks, and she’s nervous. Mandy flicks the ashe from the end of her cigarette and looks over at the girl. 

“Yeah,” she says.

“Can I-” Debbie ducks her head, flushing. “Can I read to you? Sometimes it’s easier to understand when I read it out loud.” 

Mandy tucks her hair behind her ear and nods. “What is it?”

“The Great Gatsby,” Debbie says, then explains the plot up to where she is, pointing to her spot in the book with one purple fingernail to remind herself where she left off, so Mandy won’t be lost when she starts up again. Debbie’s offered to teach Mandy how to read, but she declined. She’s dead, and lives in the lake, what would she do with books? Debbie had insisted, but Mandy was adamant. It’s the only thing they’ve ever fought about. 

Debbie reads to her, and Mandy tries to pay attention, but she doesn’t really care about the characters. She likes the sound of Debbie’s voice, like she has gravel stuck in her throat. She closes her eyes and just listens to it, occasionally taking a drag of her cigarette. 

As cold as it is outside, Mandy’s hair stays frozen for hours, so it isn’t for a while after Debbie begins reading that Mandy has to stop her to go swim around in the lake. When she comes back to the snow fort, water dripping down her body and freezing in spots, Debbie’s packing up her papers and pens. She looks up and her hair is frizzing out from under her black hat, bushy and cute. 

“My sister just called,” Debbie says. “My brother did something really stupid, so I have to go.”

“Stupid like how?” Mandy asks, following Debbie back through the snow fort’s entrance. She watches Debbie adjust her jacket and tuck her hair up into her hat. Her cheeks are already flushed and pink with the cold. She’s forcing her arms through the straps of her backpack, and Mandy feels something tight constrict in her. Not just in her stomach or her chest, but everywhere; every part of her body feels tight like the way her father’s hands used to feel gripping her arms when she was little and in his way. She’s wound up so tight, and it’s like this every time, every time Debbie leaves, Mandy feels like her whole world is over. She slumps her shoulders, curling in on herself. 

“Stupid like, he drew all over the walls in marker and Fiona’s making me come home to clean it up.” Debbie rolls her eyes, offering Mandy an apologetic smile. The hug she offers before taking off is brief and does nothing to relieve the pressure building in Mandy’s stomach. 

Mandy’s seen some of Debbie’s favorite movies, romantic comedies with boys who watch girls walk away, listened to her talk about her classmates for hours and hours, and she thinks she knows what Debbie means when she says “crush” because it feels like there’s a weight on Mandy’s chest crushing her from the outside in. Mandy, who is dead and naked and some kind of Eastern European mermaid, has a crush on Debbie, a girl with freckles and a future and people who love her. 

That night, Mandy lounges on the ice in the lake, legs dangling into the water and she’s smoking the pack of cigarettes Debbie left for her. She gets the ashe all over herself, and uses her wet fingers to draw on her skin with it, dotting her abdomen with gray sludge. She pretends she has freckles like Debbie’s, touching herself like she wants to touch Debbie. The ashe smudges and it leaves Mandy feeling silly and useless. 

She doesn’t know what to do about her feelings. Part of her, the same part that wanted to drown Debbie all those weeks ago, wishes she’d never met the girl. She doesn’t want to feel this way because she’s dead and she never even knew she could. 

**

Winter fades into spring, and with the warm breezes and pretty purple irises comes Debbie in shorts and light sweaters that float around her body like new leaves on the lake’s smooth surface. She smiles more when the snow’s gone. She says it’s because she likes the weather better, but Mandy thinks maybe her family struggles more in the winter months than they do when it’s warm. 

“Hey, Mandy?” Debbie says. They’re sitting on the beach, feet in the water, sun on their faces. 

“Yeah?” Mandy’s stacking pebbles, enjoying the noises they make when they crash together. Debbie’s face is very close her to hers when she looks up, head tilted, red hair falling over her shoulder in a complicated looking braid. 

“Do you think-” Debbie blinks, and clears her throat. “Would you want to meet Mickey? In person?” 

Mandy’s chest convulses painfully. She shakes her head, wet hair flying wildly around her. “No,” she says. She can’t, she doesn’t want to. Mickey let her die, and if she sees him she’ll kill him. “No,” she repeats, because she loved her brother once, and might still.

“Okay, Mandy,” Debbie says, touching Mandy’s knee comfortingly. “You don’t have to.”

Debbie’s hand on Mandy’s leg looks so tanned, like the sand under them, and it’s so warm. Debbie is always warm to Mandy, whose skin feels like ice, even to her. She looks at Debbie’s hand on her, big and freckled, and creeps her own pale, fragile hand over to hover over it. Mandy’s hands have done things she never wants Debbie to see; evil, dark things that make Mandy burn with anger. 

But Debbie knows. She knows what Mandy is, knows what she does, and she’s still here, soaking her feet in the lake with her, watching the clouds roll over the sun. Mandy thinks about that, and thinks about how happy Mickey looks in those pictures Debbie shows her, and she drops her hand, lets it fall until it’s covering Debbie’s. 

There’s a tense minute where Mandy can’t look at her, can’t look at the girl, and stares out over the rolling waves of the lake, blue and uncaring, instead. Then, she feels Debbie’s hand turn under her’s until their palms are flush together. Debbie’s fingers are longer than her’s, Mandy notices when they curl up, lacing their fingers tight and holds on like it’s everything she could ever want. 

When Mandy looks down, at their joined hands, she thinks of Debbie’s movies and of couples at the beach and sees them in this moment. She sees Debbie’s shy smile, the apples of her cheeks bright red, giving her hair a run for its money, and thinks that this is it. This is worth all the hurt she felt in the winter, worth the water in her lungs. Mandy smiles back, so wide her jaw hurts. 

They sit like that, pressed up against each other, until Debbie pulls away, reaching into her purse for a pack of cigarettes still wrapped in plastic. “I got these for you,” she says, opening them and discarding the trash, tucking it into her bag. Debbie slides open the top and pulls out a cigarette, turning it and putting it back into the pack filter first, before handing the whole thing to Mandy. “If you smoke that one last,” she smiles, “It’ll give you luck.”

Mandy runs her damp, sandy fingers over the ends of the cigarettes, pausing on the one Debbie flipped. “Thanks,” she says, looking up and grinning. She pulls out one of the cigarettes and lights it, feeling completely satisfied. 

She’s dead, and she’s the monster Ukrainian mothers warn their children about, but she has Debbie, and she has the lake, and she feels good right now. Better than she ever has, and certainly better than she ever did alive. Mandy inhales, exhaling through her nose, and it makes Debbie laugh. 

**

Midway through summer, Mandy’s floating on her back, arms spread out, treading water to keep her body straight. She’s close to shore waiting for Debbie, who’s running late. Mandy doesn’t mind though. The sun in the sky feels good on her body and the lake’s surface is calm and rocks her gently. 

It’s almost night when Debbie finally shows up, towel wrapped around her shoulders, her hair hanging loose down her back. Mandy moves to get out of the lake, but Debbie tells her to stay in, her tone clipped and short. Mandy curls her legs under her body, bobbing by the shoreline with her shoulders under the waves, taking comfort from Debbie’s cold greeting in the water’s embrace. She watches Debbie set down her bag, lay out the towel, and begin to strip out of her shirt. Mandy blinks, surprised, because even if she has seen Debbie without her clothes on more than a few occasions since the spring, she’s never just flung them off the way she’s doing now. Under her tank top and shorts is a bathing suit, the one Mandy saw her in at the tail end of last summer, when they met the first time, and Mandy is filled with anxiety at the sight. 

Debbie steps up the waters edge and Mandy can see her take a deep breath before walking in. She’s up to her knees, only a few feet away from where Mandy’s floating, when she stops. She lowers herself into the water and sits on the gravel, legs folded up against her chest. She’s swaying with the tide, but firmly planted. Debbie closes her eyes and sighs contentedly. 

“What are you doing?” Mandy asks, voice high and reedy. She’s panicking, because Debbie’s the lake, in her lake, and she shouldn’t be. 

“When I was like, 13, I thought I was in love with Matty,” Debbie says, her eyes still closed. Mandy knows; she knows about Matty and how he and Debbie were together and then they weren’t, and now they’re friends and he’s in love with Angie. She knows, because Debbie’s told her all about it. In excruciating detail, because Debbie does nothing halfway. “Well, when Fiona found out, she was pissed. I mean, he’s almost as old as she is, so it’s understandable. Anyway, she sat me down and instead of banning me from seeing him, she asked me if I trusted him.”

“Did you?” Mandy asks, wrapping her arms around herself. 

“You know, I didn’t. Not really. I wanted him to like me, and I wanted him to want me, but I didn’t really trust him with what was important to me,” Debbie replied. “I didn’t realize it at first but-- I knew it. And really, Fiona was right,” Debbie says, opening her eyes. She launches herself forward, darting through the water with practiced ease. She’s so close now that Mandy can see every freckle dusting the bridge of her nose. “‘I trust you’ means more than ‘I love you.’” 

Mandy’s shaking all over because she loves this girl, loves her and doesn’t want to kill her. She’s so terrified that she’ll change her mind and sink her into the depths where the bones of countless men lay waiting for more. She’s scared and shaking, and Debbie puts her hands on her shoulders and brings her in close, hugging Mandy’s body to her own and Mandy feels like she’s being broken open. Debbie holds her together with her hands and her comforting words, whispering them into Mandy’s ear. The water washes over their shoulders, and everything feels wrong. 

“It goes both ways,” Debbie murmurs into Mandy’s shoulder. “You have to trust me too.”

Mandy hesitates, eyes burning and stomach churning. Her hands are caught up in Debbie’s hair and she thinks back to that first day and tightens her hold on the girl, clinging to her like a wet shirt on a hot day. She can’t imagine her life without Debbie, she can’t imagine anything without Debbie now. 

“I do,” Mandy says anyway, even though she doesn’t really know what it means, and it feels like a lie. 

Debbie pulls away, and she’s smiling so hugely that Mandy can’t help but smile back, albet shakily. “Come on,” Debbie says. “Let’s swim!” 

Mandy’s so nervous when Debbie glides away, diving deep into the lake, dark to reflect the night sky. It got dark during Debbie’s confession, and now Mandy can’t see Debbie in the lake. She waits anxiously for her to pop back up for air. It takes much longer than she thinks it will. Debbie has iron lungs, and Mandy finds herself waiting for what feels like hours. 

When Debbie finally comes up for air, she’s grinning and laughing, her hair matted and stuck to her face and neck. Mandy is frozen still, and she doesn’t move when Debbie beckons her over. She’s so scared. There’s a pile of bones under Debbie’s body, sitting on the bottom of the lake with the plants, collecting muck and crawling with fresh water snails. Debbie’s treading over the bodies of people she might have known, will never know because Mandy drowned them. 

“Trust me,” Debbie says again, and Mandy nods. She reaches her hand out and lets Debbie pull her close. They dive together into the waves and when Mandy feels the rush of water in her face she feels calmer, more relaxed. She is worried, but it feels less important when she sees the faintest outline of Debbie with her hair fanned out around her, swimming through the current. It’s as beautiful as she thought it would be, and she hopes one day to see it with the sun streaming in through the lake’s surface. If this is what trust feels like, Mandy could get used it. 

**

Hours later, the moon is full and high in the sky and Mandy’s floating on her back, arms spread out for balance. One of her hands is holding one of Debbie’s, and there’s a pleasant pull at the base of her stomach. 

“Otters do this, you know?” Debbie says, breaking through their companionable silence. She squeezes Mandy’s hand hard, and laughs. 

“Do what?”

“They hold hands in the water so they won’t drift away while they’re asleep.” Mandy smiles and tucks her face against her shoulder, hiding her smitten face. It’s too dark to see, but she does it anyway, because she can’t deal with how ridiculous she feels. This girl makes her giddy and alive and not at all like a monster, despite herself. 

Mandy runs her thumb, wet and cold, against Debbie’s knuckles. They’re quiet again, silent from satisfaction and unrestrained excitement. 

“Hey, Debbie?” Mandy asks, whispering. She can feel Debbie turn to look at her, water rippling at her movement, but Mandy can’t look at her right now, not while she forces the words from her throat. “Do you think- do you think you could maybe bring Mickey around sometime?”

Mandy waits for Debbie to say something, anything, but she doesn’t. Minutes pass, and Mandy gets more and more anxious until she can’t help herself and looks over at the girl, eyes wide. She doesn’t know what she’s expecting to see in Debbie’s face, but it isn’t a grin wide enough to split her face in two, illuminated by the moon. 

“Sure, Mandy,” Debbie says, her eyes bright and shining. Mandy smiles back, a flush creeping it’s way over her pale cheeks. 

Debbie sleeps on the shore that night, hidden in Mandy’s rocky hiding spot. She’s a sound sleeper, with Mandy curled around her back watching her breathe for hours. Mandy is so thankful for this girl. She’d never known how alone she was before Debbie showed up, library books in hand. She talks so much, but Mandy likes it because it’s always something worth hearing, some exciting fact about the world. Mandy can’t believe how lucky she is, to be given a chance at something as wonderful as trust and love, despite everything. 

In the morning, the sun is high in the sky and a light breeze blows through the trees, making them dance. Mandy wakes Debbie with a kiss and laughs when she yawns halfway through it, eyes blinking up at her blearily. She’s so unimaginably happy that she can’t breathe, her breath catching in her throat. Debbie touches her face softly, brushing a strand of damp hair behind Mandy’s ear, and kisses her back.

**Author's Note:**

> queermccoy.tumblr.com


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